


Lost and Found

by sunshinestealer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Death, Gen, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-20
Updated: 2015-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 08:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4173228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sadstuck where Tavros dies during his FLARPing incident with Vriska. Gamzee is distraught, and as a memento to Tavros, he takes in Tinkerbull as his surrogate lusus.  Together, they try to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

** ===> Be Tinkerbull. **

You cannot be a lusus naturae! Like most members of the animal kingdom, the mind of a lusus is impenetrable, kept concealed behind glassy eyes. It is the curse of whichever sapient species lives on the planet, to never know whether the beasts below them are intelligent, or merely fulfilling their biological prerogatives. Lusus are much the same, with trolls barely able to communicate with the creatures who symbiotically parent them until the former reaches adulthood. Still, their intelligence (or lack thereof) allows them to be trained relatively easily. A chunk of meat here and there, the remains of some troll who fell down a canyon into your spiderweb… That sort of thing. Just keeps them quiet while you, the hypothetical troll child in this scenario, get to typing aimlessly at your computer or going out FLARPing or whatever.

Wait, what am I writing this for? This isn’t a book on the relationship between lusii and trolls, or a philosophical discussion of their perceived intelligence!

But I can see the same, dull look in your eyes as that of a beast. It’s as if all I said went in one ear and out the other, isn’t it? Pink marshmallow between the ears instead of a brain-pan. Well. That’s your issue, buddy. Pay attention when people are speaking. It’s only polite.

Oh, don’t give me that look.

You… really want to be a lusus naturae? All right, fine. But allow me some liberties with the story too.

Have we achieved a compromise? I think we have. 

Are you sitting comfortably? Then, I’ll begin. 

** ===> Be Tinkerbull. **

Your name is TINKERBULL, and you are an adorable little fairy-bull lusus. Seriously, you can fit comfortably in a pocket, sparkles come out of your wings whenever you flit to and fro, and you’re the most affectionate thing in the world next to a human puppy. As in, a puppy that humans have genetically engineered to be friendly and affectionate to humans. Not a human who _is_ a — we’re getting off track here.

We’ve already discussed how young trolls live in a symbiotic relationship with their lusii. You should know this already, but it probably bears repeating. Trolls do not have parents, but they do have caretakers. These caretakers can be anything from a pint-sized squeakbeast to an eldritch abomination that could kill every member of the species throughout the universe. TINKERBULL is, thankfully, on the smaller end of the scale. 

Damn it, we keep getting off topic. 

** ===> Observe surroundings. **

You’re currently on a beach, and observing the sight of a horrible accident. Well, not so much an accident as an outright murder. The spider girl (the one Tavros would claim was his friend) who used to give you the creeps was stood atop the cliff above for a few minutes, before wandering off. Just enough time to check if your charge was dead. If she comes down to the beach to further sully Tavros’ body, you’re going to charge her. Sure, she could just as easily swat you out of the air, where you would be in too much pain to move and soon victim to a wave-dwelling lusus… But critical thinking like that doesn't come quite so easily to you, being a lusus and all.

Tavros is in a terrible way, with a thick puddle of brown blood seeping from his head. Had he fallen any other way, you’re sure he would have simply lose the function of his hind legs. You’re not sure how bipedal creatures work, not that you spend much time on four legs. You’re fluttering desperately over him, assuming his heart must be in a similar place to where it is on most creatures. You listen to it. There’s a weak beating. 

** ===> Check eyes. **

His eyes are wide open in shock, his mouth agape in terror. There’s even a thin sheen of sweat on his epidermis, probably produced when the young troll realised he wasn’t going to make it out of this alive. 

** ===> Check limbs. **

Yikes. They’re in a bit of a tangled mess, aren’t they? You could hook one of those circular pastries - the kind that your charge orders in a box from Troll Krispy Kreme - on a sticking-out shinbone. The pastries he will not let you eat due to ‘sugar’. Or some word like that. You suppose he has a point, if you ever wound up being far too fat to get off of the ground. 

** ===> Curl up on chest. **

Truthfully, you do not know what happens when your charge is as horribly injured as this, or even… dies. You’re the kind of lusus with a naturally short lifespan, matching that of your hemotype. But you never imagined you’d have to leave Tavros so early. 

You love him so much.

It doesn’t take a fully sapient creature to know that your charge is no longer breathing. And his vascular pump is on its way to giving up for good. He’s not going to be waking up any time soon. When Tavros was a wiggler, you nearly had a heart attack when he tumbled down a hill outside your shared hive, running down the slope too fast whilst pretending to be Pupa Pan. He had a goose egg bruise on his forehead for a good few days. After leading him back to the safety of home, you curled up on his lap while he cried that evening.

This is going to take a lot more than snuggles — and now Tavros was old enough, the paps of a dear moirail.

You’re so young — you’re not sure what happens to lusii who are this irresponsible. Maybe the culling drones will sweep through here soon enough, swatting you like a buzz-bug and creating a bonfire out of Tavros’ body. Or tossing it carelessly into the sea for giant lusii to prey upon.

You can’t die yet. Your greatest achievement in life was to be acting as a shepherd over a tiny little troll as they caught their first glimpse of moonlight. When you were still in the nest with your mother, you had a dream of the honor of being a lusus to a troll, not just a common beast with no purpose in life other than to eat and procreate. 

That’s why, when your mother chased you away from her embrace forever, you searched around until you found an entrance to one of the breeding caves. And there, after only a few perigees, you locked eyes with a tiny hatchling, covered in blood from successfully performing his set of trials. You sniffed him, and knew he matched your hemotype exactly — but it wasn’t going to be easy out on the surface world. 

He was already too friendly, toddling off in the direction of much more dangerous lusii whilst chasing after hop-beasts. You’d rescued him from a few near misses, flying for your life and hoping that the more aggressive barkfiends would grow bored of the scent after a while.

**=== > Think of what to do next.** 

You don’t want to leave Tavros’ body, even though the warmth is fast leaving it. There’s an invisible connection between the two of you. Like a string of fate, or whatever the blind crones used in Troll Disney’s _Hercules_. Soon, they will snip it, as Tavros heads off for the afterlife. You’d think that lusii would die at the same time as their charges, but you come to learn that is not the case. 

As Tavros slips off the mortal coil, the psychic link, the bond you two have always shared… it suddenly disappears. You’re left with an emptiness in your mind, and you call out in distress, both telepathically and vocally, kneading your hooves onto Tavros’ limp torso.

You zip around, your wings spreading glitter everywhere. You alight, crawling over his face and over to the crown of his skullbone, where you try in vain to push him further away from the sea. There’s an instinct in you — avoid the beach as daylight breaks, when the tides thickly coat large swathes of the beach, and the waves come crashing all around, thanks to the imbalance caused by Alternia’s two moons.

You’re not going to move him anywhere. Even with all the strength you can muster. Your face is covered in sticky brown blood, and when you collapse into the puddle seeping out from under Tavros’ head wound, your coat is no longer a pristine white.

You aren’t aware of a passing of time, too distressed by the death of your charge. You recall, vaguely, crawling onto his chest and nestling there. If the waves claim you, or a vicious, sea-dwelling lusus crawls out to feast on you both, then so be it. In a calmer state of mind, a lusus who loses its charge usually heads back to the nearest breeding cavern, patiently hiding away from the other monsters and waiting for the next batch of wigglers to come crawling through the darkness.

**=== > Hear loud noises.** 

The alarm must have been sounded among Tavros’ friends when he didn’t come back online from his FLARP session. 

You know that his highblood friend Gamzee has a slightly longer school-feeding schedule, and church for about 30 minutes after the teaching drones are dismissed. He must have only just gotten the news.

He and Tavros always make time to talk, though. You’ve seen Tavros eagerly hunched over in his computer chair most evenings, waiting to ‘kick the wicked jams’ with Gamzee, whatever that meant. You watched Tavros’ face light up in happiness during his first phone conversation with the highblood, where they giggled over how strange their voices sounded. You watched their first video link-up too, and their first rap battle. (No personal bias or anything, but Tavros totally knocked his first slam session out of the communal gathering area.)

Gamzee has visited once or twice too. You decided you liked Gamzee. He gave you extra lusus biscuits, and seemed to enjoy petting, snuggling and holding you, rarely letting you out of his sight. You would later learn that this was due to the purpleblood having a rather absent lusus; a capricornus that largely preferred the ocean to staying on land with its charge. You can’t even imagine why a lusus would want to spend most of its time away from its charge — not that you can imagine much, being a lusus and all.

But, as you’re awoken by the shouts, there’s that pair of familiar horns, coming up over the brow of the hill that leads down to this beach. Gamzee breaks into a shambling run as he sees the gory image — Tavros’ mangled legs, his slightly-smashed skull, eyes wide in shock.

Following behind Gamzee is Karkat, the nubby-horned troll who is supposedly Gamzee’s best friend next to Tavros. He’s fiddling around with a phone in the shape of a crab, furiously texting. Trolls aren’t known to be altruistic — he’s likely writing a profanity-laden rant to the Serket girl for not properly disposing of the body, and making Gamzee drag him away from an evening of productive coding.

Gamzee kneels down, and gathers up some glitter from your agitated wingbeats, that has left a fine coating on Tavros’ shirt. He clasps his hands together in prayer, but continually hesitates, as if in denial of Tav’s condition. He opens one eye. He forgets his litanies. He starts to sing hymns, but keeps forgetting the rhythm or the lyrics, eventually frustratedly having to splash the special stardust in his face and go off somewhere to work out his highblood aggression. He probably has a violent arson in mind for a certain Vriska Serket.

Karkat looks up from his furious tapping to grab Gamzee by the arm. “Stop doing those esoteric rituals. He’s _gone_. A thousand trolls probably died today, and nobody gave them a corpse party and this ashes to ashes, dust to dust bullshit!”

Then Gamzee gives Karkat the dewiest, most pity-filled eyes he could possibly muster. He stammers something about ‘Tavbro,’ before collapsing into hysterical sobs on Karkat’s shoulder.

You blearily watch all the drama unfold, as Gamzee has to be hurriedly shoosh-papped. You make a weary mooing sound during a moment of silence, where Karkat has agreed to pray for Tavros if it’ll calm Gamzee down.

“Shit. His lusus is still alive.” Karkat tuts, directing Gamzee towards you. “…Do we leave it for the culling drones, or throw it on the fire too, or…?”

Gamzee looks horrified at both of those suggestions, immediately scooping you up in his arms and holding you close to his chest. It’s almost sickeningly maternal — if the look on Karkat’s face is anything to go by.

“…I’ll motherfuckin’ make sure she gets to a cavern, Kar.” Gamzee says quietly, almost struggling to hold back the overwhelming rage he must be feeling towards his friend’s murderer. 

You’re too tired to protest. Karkat nods and goes to collect as much driftwood as he can carry for the pyre. You try to nuzzle Gamzee, bleating pathetically, but he’s unresponsive. He watches glassily as Karkat constructs a cube of a pyre as hastily as possible, just to place Tavros inside it and get rid of any evidence that he existed.

Well, except for you, of course.

Gamzee puts you down momentarily, just so he can help Karkat lay Tavros’ body among the wood. His broken neck lolls, and the two trolls have to very carefully lay him down. 

Calmer than earlier, Gamzee decides to say a prayer, and Karkat half-heartedly clasps his hands together. This time, the purpleblood doesn’t trip over every other word, and he allows Karkat to join in on the sermon too. He asks to be the torchbearer when the prayer is finally said, and Karkat goes to rub a bunch of dry sticks together to make a flame. Gamzee tears a rag off of his shirt, ties it around a long branch, and dips it into the fire. He has to avert his eyes before tossing it into the pyre with Tavros, swallowing down his tears as he walks back to safety with Karkat under a hundred yards away.

You’ve been left on the floor for now, sat in between two grieving friends as you watch your charge’s spirit - well, the thick flames that reach up high in the air - soaring up into the sky, like those beautiful fire birds of Eastern Alternian mythology. 

Goodbye, Tavros. _I loved you so much._

** ==> Tinkerbull: Be carried south down the coast. **

Some time later, Gamzee gathers you up in his arms, and he and Karkat part ways. You notice that Gamzee’s paint has been running, light grey streaks snaking down his neck and onto his T-shirt. Trolls are taught from an early age to never, _ever_ show weakness. Sensitivity and empathy are not highly valued traits in such a cut-throat world. But you suppose this is Gamzee’s one exception.

He walks to his hive in a fixated manner, occasionally shaking with rage and grief. You suppose it’s getting too light out for him to find you a breeding cave. He saunters in through the open archway, and winces when stepping on a horn.

“…Tinkerbull, was it?” He asks quietly, setting you down on a counter next to a stack of pie tins. There’s a lot of dried blood on your coat, beginning to cake and mat. He switches on the water. “Tav named you after _Pupa Pan_ , yeah?" 

You don’t know how to reply — Tavros used to converse with you via telepathy. You give a little affirmative chirp, hoping he can understand that from tone alone. You shake a few drops of blood out of your fur, and watch as it all slides down towards the drain. Gamzee picks you up carefully, putting you under the tap. You take the opportunity to shake out your wings, watching just as forlornly as Gamzee as the water gets clearer and clearer as you wash yourself off.

Gamzee finds you a towel, before going upstairs to “do some ritual shit.” You decide to give the young, newly bereaved troll some privacy. 

And it’s not long before you hear anguished howls ripping through the hive.


End file.
